


Pause

by Carrogath



Series: Present Tense [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24336334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrogath/pseuds/Carrogath
Summary: Dorothea, peach sorbet, and an utter lack of decorum.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Mercedes von Martritz
Series: Present Tense [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756927
Kudos: 39





	Pause

Mercedes doesn’t remember how they got here, admittedly. One minute she was washing dishes in the dining hall, and the next Dorothea was feeding her peach sorbet off a spoon in one of the courtyards in the monastery sectioned off by hedges, and above the hedge she can spot a trellis and some creeping vines, and it’s the middle of Garland Moon, and it’s hot. Dorothea alternates between feeding herself and feeding Mercedes. They don’t talk. They people-watch, and they watch people watch them, and the air is still and humid and pregnant with silence and moisture.

Mercedes lies half on the bench and half in Dorothea’s lap, sweating. There’s a million things she could say right now. Mostly, she thinks, she wants to exist only in this strange place after the war and prior to reconstruction—the only time in living memory that could be definitively described as “peaceful,” when no one was seeking anything but rest.

She doesn’t want the summer to end.

“You haven’t been working as much… or as hard.” Dorothea gathers up a mouthful of sorbet onto her spoon and presses her tongue flat against the bowl, lazily lapping up its contents. She turns the spoon over in her mouth, one way and then the other, sucking on the cold metal as if deep in thought. “I don’t think I’ve seen you rest a day in your life.” She sounds wistful. “I wish I had more to offer you.”

Before Mercedes can sit up and stop her, she goes on, “Oh, I know what you’re going to say.”

Mercedes props herself up on her elbows and stares at her.

Dorothea clears her throat, mimics the tone of Mercedes’s voice, flourishes with the spoon, “‘Dorothea, whatever you have to offer will never not be enough. I love you exactly as you are, Dorothea. Please don’t think you ever have to change for my sake.’”

Mercedes can’t help herself. She snickers, and then bursts into laughter, throwing herself into Dorothea’s lap. Her head might bump against the base of the sorbet glass, but she’s too busy trying to stifle her own giggles to notice.

“Is that how I sound to you?”

Dorothea snorts. That, Mercedes thinks, is answer enough.

“Get on your back,” says Dorothea, “and let me feed you more sorbet.”

She turns over so that she’s lying on her back in Dorothea’s lap, and Dorothea spoons more of the sorbet out of the glass and into Mercedes’s mouth. It’s a terribly odd position, and when Mercedes swallows she can feel it in her ears.

“Goddess, I want to ram this thing all the way down your throat until you choke on it.”

At least Dorothea is honest.

“You are enough, you know.” Mercedes folds her hands over her stomach.

“Oh, come off it.”

“But you are.”

Dorothea eats more of the sorbet and sucks furiously on the spoon. “You’d say that to anyone,” she mutters around the metal, “you’d say it to Rhea’s goddess-forsaken corpse.”

“Dorothea,” Mercedes chides, “that’s blasphemous language.”

“You helped kill her too, you dolt.” She pulls the spoon out of her mouth and gathers a little more sorbet onto the bowl. “Don’t try to act all high and mighty now.” Then she holds the spoon up to Mercedes’s mouth. “Say ‘ah.’”

Mercedes obliges. It’s cold and it’s sweet and she can’t really taste it anymore, can’t really focus on anything but the way Dorothea twists and turns the spoon in her mouth, licks and sucks and lavishes it with attention until she feels herself turning green with envy.

“You seem to like it a lot. The sorbet.”

“Not really,” Dorothea replies, holding the spoon out and away from the sorbet glass. “Well, I do, but I like the way you look at me more.” She pauses. “And I like tonguing it. I imagine I’m doing it all to you and that makes it taste so much better.”

“Dorothea, do you ever think about anything other than sex?”

“Not if I don’t have to.”

Mercedes sighs. “What would the Mercedes in your head say to that?”

Dorothea stares down at her, wide-eyed. Then she looks away, sulking. “That I’m being… salacious. Improper.” She flicks the bowl of the spoon up into the air. “Lewd. One of the Mercedeses, anyway. The other one is too busy riding my face to scold me.”

“The one you think about when you’re licking that?”

“The very same.” She looks at the sorbet. “It’s melting. I mean…” She holds the glass up into the air, feigns tipping it onto Mercedes’s face. “Whatever would I do if it accidentally spilled? I would have to clean it all up.”

“Don’t you dare.”

She grins. “Oh, so now you get angry?”

Mercedes doesn’t try to reach for the glass, much to her own relief.

“Just admit it,” Dorothea says, spooning more of the melting sorbet into her mouth, “you think I’m pushy.”

“Were you going to offer me patience,” Mercedes says quietly, “was that it?”

Dorothea looks up, far away. Even though it remains in her mouth, she doesn’t try to do anything indecent with the spoon.

“Do I have any left to give,” she murmurs, “is the real question.”

Then she pulls the spoon out of her mouth, and sighs.

“I just, I only ever want things for myself and you only ever want things for other people and I never know what I’m doing and you always seem to figure these things out on your own and I always feel so _inadequate_ in comparison like I’ll never be en—”

Mercedes grabs her then, pulls her into a kiss that’s deep and rough and hungry, scouring the inside of her mouth with her tongue before Dorothea has a chance to react. She pulls away just as quickly, thoughts going off like sparks inside of her head, setting fire to everything they touch until the walls of her mind are alight with tongues of flame and everything within has been burned to ashes.

She feels cleansed, purer. Better.

Dorothea’s mouth flaps open and then closed again, moving but not forming words. She’s been doing that a lot lately.

“It’s you,” Mercedes breathes, grasping her face. Dorothea is half-bent over her with a spoon in one hand and a dripping glass of melted sorbet in another. She knows they can’t stay like this for long, so she gets the rest out before she runs out of air, “Dorothea, if there’s anything I don’t have enough of, it’s you. You’re wrong. I want whatever you can give me, and even more than that.” Her hands slide up her jaw, fingers closing around the back of her neck. “You aren’t enough and you might not ever be but instead of wishing you were more just try to be it.” She gasps. “I love you, but not because you’ll never change. I love you because you are so much more than what you say you are, even if you don’t know it yet, and I want to be there the day that all falls into place and everything about the world starts making sense to you again.” She pulls her down and kisses her. Then she lets her go. “Now sit up and stop gawking. That can’t be comfortable.”

She does, woodenly, straightens her back as if someone’s pushed a rod into her spine and she’s lining herself up against it. And then she holds out the spoon and the glass, as though they could be the sword and the scales of almighty Justice herself. “Enough,” she says, staring blankly into the distance. “Like I’ll never be enough for you.”

Mercedes takes the spoon and the glass from her hands, and sets them aside on the bench. She looks at her, watching the thoughts roil behind her eyes.

“That’s basically saying the same thing as before, isn’t it?” Dorothea asks.

“What is?”

“That you’ll love me no matter who I am, and no matter how I change, and that everything I need to be myself is already inside of me. That’s…” She pauses. “That’s…” she leers at her, “unfair.”

“How so?”

“Because now the Mercedes in my head that tells me I’m being a boor and the Mercedes in my head that wants to ride my face are merging into the same person, and now I’ll feel guilty when I think of either of them but for different reasons, and you’re the only one to blame for what that does to me.”

“Oh,” says Mercedes, leering back. “How can I ever make it up to you?”

Dorothea grins. “Hold still.”

And then she pounces, and the glass holding the melted sorbet tips over and rolls into the grass, and the bench is sticky and Mercedes’s hair is a mess and the summer goes on and on.

It ends eventually, as all things do. But when it finally does, she finds that she doesn’t miss it anymore.


End file.
